


Morning Came the Warmer

by Deannie



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, birthday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 09:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6188344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A trip north in winter leaves Ezra time to contemplate this... thing... with Chris. And whether its permanence matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morning Came the Warmer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mendax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Mendax! You are a bad influence, and I appreciate you for it.

They had been on the trail for five days now, headed north toward Colorado. They were expected in Kirktown tomorrow, for the trial of an enterprising young cattle thief who had amassed a collection of cows from all over the territory without paying for a one of them. Ezra doubted their testimony would count for very much at all, given the amount of evidence, but it had been a good excuse to get out of town for a while.   


It also gave Ezra time to think, which was something he was good at. Mostly, these days, he thought about what a hell of a life he'd led, especially lately. It was all very odd, this business in Four Corners. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had friends before now—he had many. The sheer bulk of his monthly correspondences was a running joke among the town's lawmen. 

But there was something about _these_ men in particular. After four years—betrayals and peril and heroics and all—he trusted them perhaps more than he had trusted anyone else in his life. Which was both frightening and comforting at once.

And then there were the fringe benefits that had cropped up in the last few months, with one of them in particular. That had been the real reason behind this trip. He smiled in memory at the confused look Buck had given Chris when Larabee gruffly ordered Ezra to pack up and be ready to go in an hour. The camaraderie of seven was all well and good, but it made it very difficult to maintain a relationship—if one could call what Ezra and Chris had a “relationship” at all, known as it was by a grand total of two people, including themselves—while constantly surrounded and surveilled.   


The nights had been getting colder as they headed north, but there were just the two of them and Chris’s body heat was considerable. Ezra had no problem taking advantage as shamelessly as possible.

“You warmed up now?” came a sleepy question, shaking him out of his thoughts.

Ezra looked down at Chris, who lay sated and drowsing beneath him as they cocooned in the combined weight of their bedrolls. They were pleasantly dirty and he knew they should do something about that, but he was content to just lie here and enjoy the heat they’d generated.

“Nicely, thank you,” he said, dropping his head onto Chris’s chest. “I believe I shall be able to sleep without shivering this time.”

“So damn polite,” Chris murmured, a smile in the tone. “And such a Southerner.”

Ezra snorted. “I’m hardly a wilting Carolina blossom, Mr. Larabee,” he returned quietly. “I once spent more than a week in a cabin buried under seven feet of snow. Believe me when I say I have been colder than this.”

Chris’s hand shifted lazily to the small of Ezra’s back and stayed there. “Where was that?”

“The mountains of Colorado,” Ezra replied. “Forter’s Pass.” He smiled in remembrance. At the beginning, it had been such an adventure... “I won enough to cover my traveling expenses and then some. Poor folks never knew what hit them.”

“How old were you?” Chris asked. Ezra was surprised, but he shouldn’t have been. Chris always seemed to know when he was remembering his childhood. He wondered idly what his tell was...

“Nine,” he answered easily. He rarely bothered hiding things from Chris anymore. There was no margin in it. “Mother was enmeshed in a scheme in San Francisco and sent me on ahead toward a friend of hers in Colorado Springs. The stagecoach became mired in the snow and we had to hike two miles through the stuff to get to our safe haven. It was little more than a glorified box with a stove, but it kept us alive and dry.”

“And there were cards,” Chris said, a grin in his voice.

“There are always cards, my friend.” He quieted. For the few good memories of that trip, the worst of it he remembered too clearly. He concentrated on the heat Chris was putting out. “Almost too valuable to burn even when they were all we had left.”

Chris was silent for a very long time, and Ezra didn’t bother to say more. It hardly mattered. Most of them had made it out just fine. These things happened, he reminded himself, repeating his mother's words to himself silently as he let loose a shiver. He had spent the last day in the cabin curled around the girth of Miss Sadie, a buxom young freed-woman from San Francisco. She hadn’t been as warm as the man underneath him now. In the end, two of the others hadn’t been warm at all.

“You’ve led a hell of a life, Ezra,” Chris finally said, the hand on Ezra’s back tightening in comfort. That word again. How strange to have found comfort in a man who, by all public appearances, disliked and distrusted him on sight. He still hadn't figured out what this thing with Chris was or how it would play out. He wanted to think it was something significant.   


But he knew better. He _had_ led a hell of a life, after all, and he’d learned a few lessons along the way. One of them had been in that cabin in Colorado. Share what heat you can, when you can. It might not be there when you look for it next.

“We should get some sleep,” he pronounced, cuddling in shamelessly and trying to forget his memories again. Focus on the now when it isn't painful. “I fear this trial will be more circus than legal proceeding.”

As he seemed to do more and more these days, Chris read him, knew how wrapped in the past he was at the moment. 

“We could do that,” Chris agreed, his hand running sensuously up Ezra’s spine to play in his hair. “Still a little cold, though, don’t you think?”

Ezra smiled resignedly at the gentle tug at the back of his head. He looked up into Chris’s face and offered his lips, the kiss long and soft and comforting and altogether everything Ezra had never really thought he’d get. The question of whether he'd get to keep it was one for another day.  


“I believe I could be persuaded to delay a little longer,” he said, sliding his own hands down to ghost over Chris’s nethers, making him harden again at the stimulus.

“You always can, Ezra,” Chris murmured.

In the darkness, they shared what heat they could, and morning came the warmer for it.

****  
the end


End file.
